Nor deem the irrevocable Past, SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess; The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, The action of the nobler will; All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. We have not wings, we cannot soar; The mighty pyramids of stone The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. To something nobler we attain. A MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel, The day was just begun, rior, In sombre harness mailed, And through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De and panel, Streamed the red autumn sun. It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And the white sails of ships; stroyer, The rampart wall had scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room, And, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and black cannon Hailed it with feverish lips. deeper, The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, But smote the Warden hoar; Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. |